“That could be an idea,” Leroy said.
“No,” Frank said. “We won’t do that.”
“Ain’t we partners?” Leroy said, taking off his seed salesman’s hat.
“We got a deal,” Frank said, “but I’m the one paid Nigger Joe for catching and training. So, I decide. And that’s about as partner as we get.”
Leroy shrugged, put the seed salesman’s hat back on.
The mules lined up and it was difficult to make them stay the line. Dynamite, still toting serious business on the undercarriage, lined up by White Mule, stood at least a shoulder above him. Both wore blinders now, but they turned their heads and looked at one another. Dynamite snapped at the white mule, who moved quickly, nearly throwing Frank from the saddle. White Mule snapped back at Dynamite’s nose, grazing him. He threw a little kick sideways that made Dynamite shuffle to his right.
There was yelling from the judges, threats of disqualification, though no one expected that. The crowd had already figured this race out. White Mule, the forest legend, and Dynamite, of the swinging big dick, they were the two to watch.
Leroy and Nigger Joe had pulled the hog back with a rope, but now they brought him out and let him stand in front of his mule. They had to talk to the judges on the matter, explain. There wasn’t any rule for or against it. One judge said he didn’t like the idea. One said the hog would get trampled to death anyway. Another said, shit, why not. Final decision, they let the hog stay in the race.
So the mules and the hog and the riders lined up, the hog just slightly to the side of the white mule. The hog looked over its shoulder at Nigger Joe standing behind him. By now the hog knew what was coming. A swift kick in the ass.
Frank climbed up on the white mule, and a little guy with a face like a timber axe, climbed up on Crone’s mule, Dynamite.
Out front of the line was a little bald man in a loose shirt and suspenders holding up his high-water pants, showing his scuffed and broken-laced boots. He had a pistol in his hand. He has a voice loud as Nester on the Greek line.
“Now, we got us a mule race today, ladies and gentleman. And there will be no cheatin’, or there will be disqualification, and a butt-beating you can count on to be remembered by everyone, ‘specially the cheater. What I want now, line of mules and riders, is a clean race. This here path is wide enough for all twenty of you, and you can’t fan too much to the right or left, as we got folks all along the run watching. You got to keep up pretty tight. Now, there might be some biting and kicking, and that’s to be expected. From the mules. You riders got to be civil. Or mostly. A little out of line is all right, but no knives or guns or such. Everyone understand and ain’t got no questions, let up a shout.”
A shout came from the line. The mules stirred, stepped back, stepped forward.
“Anybody don’t understand what I just said? Anyone not speak Texan or Meskin here that’s gonna race?”
No response.
“All right, then. Watch women and children, and try not to run over the men or the whores neither. I’m gonna step over there to the side, and I’m gonna raise this pistol, and when you hear the shot, there you go. May the best mule and the best rider win. Oh, yeah. We got a hog in the race too. He ain’t supposed to stay long. Just kind of lead. No problems with that from anybody, is there?”
There were no complaints.
“All right, then.”
The judge stepped briskly to the side of the road and raised his old worn.36 Navy at the sky and got an important look on his face. Nigger Joe removed the rope from the pig’s neck and found a solid position between mules and behind the hog. He cocked his foot back.
The judge fired his pistol. Nigger Joe kicked the hog in the ass. The mule line charged forward.
The hog, running for all it was worth surged forward as well, taking the lead even. White Mule and Dynamite ran dead even. The mules ran so hard a cloud of dust was thrown up. The mules and the men and the hog were swallowed by it. Frank, seeing nothing but dust, coughed and cursed and lay tight against the white mule’s neck, and squinted his eyes. He feared, without the white mule being able to see the hog, he might bolt. Maybe run into another mule, throw him into a stampede, get him stomped flat. But as they ran the cloud moved behind them, and when Frank came coughing out of the cloud, he was amazed to see the hog was well out in front, running as if he could go like that all the way to Mexico.
To his right, Frank saw Dynamite and his little axe-faced rider. The rider looked at him and smiled with gritty teeth. “You gonna get run into a hole, shit breath.”
“Shitass,” Frank said. It was the best he could come up with, but he threw it out with meaning.
Dynamite was leading the pack now, leaving the white mule and the others behind, throwing dust in their face. White Mule saw Dynamite start to straighten out in front of him, and he moved left, nearly knocking against a mule on that side. Frank figured it was so he could see the hog. The hog was moving his spotted ass on down the line.
“Git him, White Mule,” Frank said, leaning close to the mule’s left ear, resting his head against the mule’s mane. The white mule focused on the hog and started hauling some ass. He went lower and his strides got longer and the barrel back and belly rolled. When Frank looked up, the hog was bolting left, across the path of a dozen mules, just making it off the trail before taking a tumble under hooves. He fell, rolled over and over in the grass.
Frank thought: Shit, White Mule, he’s gonna bolt, gonna go after the hog. But, nope, he was true to the trail, and closing on Dynamite. The spell was on. And now the other mules were moving up too, taking a whipping, getting their sides slapped hard enough Frank could hear it, thing it sounded like Papa’s belt on his back.
“Come on, White Mule. You don’t need no hittin’, don’t need no hard heels. You got to outrun that hard dick for your own sake.”
It was as if White Mule understood him. White Mule dropped lower and his strides got longer yet. Frank clung for all he was worth, fearing the saddle might twist and lose him.
But no, Leroy, for all his goat-fucking and seed salesman’s hat stealing, could fasten harness and belly bands better than anyone that walked.
The trail became shady as they moved into a line of oaks on either side of the road. For a long moment the shadows were so thick they ran in near darkness. Then there were patches of lights through the leaves and the dust was lying closer to the ground and the road was sun-baked and harder and showing clay the color of a poison- ivy rash.
Scattered here and there along the road were viewers. A few in chairs. Most standing.
Frank ventured a look over his shoulder. The other mules and riders were way back, and some of them were already starting to falter. He noticed a couple of the mules were riderless, and one had broken rank with its rider and was off trail, cutting across the grass, heading toward the creek that twisted down amongst a line of willow trees.
As White Mule closed on Dynamite, the mule took a snapping bite at Dynamite’s tail, jerking its head back with teeth full of tail hair.
Dynamite tried to turn and look, but his rider pulled his head back into line. White Mule lunged forward, going even lower than before. Lower than Frank had ever seen him go. Lower than he thought he could go. Now White Mule was pulling up on Dynamite’s left. Dynamite’s rider jerked Dynamite back into the path in front of White Mule. Frank wheeled his mount to the right side of Dynamite. In mid-run, Dynamite wheeled and kicked, hit White Mule in the side hard enough there was an explosion of breath that made Frank think his mule would go down.
Dynamite pulled ahead.
White Mule was not so low now. He was even staggering a little as he ran.
“Easy, boy,” Frank said. “You can do it. You’re the best goddamn mule ever ran a road.”
White Mule began to run evenly again, or as even as a mule can run. He began to stretch out again, going low. Frank was surprised to see they were closing on Dynamite again.
Frank looked back.
No one was in sight. Just a few twists of dust, a ripple of heat waves. It was White Mule and Dynamite, all the way.
